Cathy's Art Diary

Fascinating small exhibition at Compton Verney focusing on an unusual 17th century painting of two women. The pictures shows a white woman and a woman of colour both wearing beauty patches in a colour contrasting with their skin. The work was shown with research material exploring the themes of the work. It discussed how it dates from the Commonwealth period and may be making a moral point about vanity. It also speculated that the artist may be Jerome Hesketh, who trained as a Catholic priest, as it was possibly painted for the Catholic Kenyon family. He toured Catholic houses performing secret masses and painting portraits as his cover. No end date given

Thoughtful exhibition at Compton Verney of new works by Renee So. The show investigated how the meaning of objects can be manipulated and distorted as they travel from buyer to seller. She took inspiration from the galleries collection of Chinese bronzes. My favourite section reproduced large versions of classic scent bottles exploring their exotic names and roots in the opium trade. Another took the image of the silkworm onto different objects in a variety of media to explore   the intertwined histories of Chinese women, symbols of power and luxury goods. I liked the recreation of So’s studio at the end of the show. Closes 8 March 2026

Interesting exhibition at Compton Verney by Gayle Chong Kwan. Kwan had been artist in residence at the gallery and created these seven photographic works in response to their Chinese collection of bronze food and wine vessels. The photographs placed the artist outside buildings linked to empire and immigration wearing a collaged mask of images of objects related to the building. These were shown alongside small, bronze objects made by them. I’m not sure I understood all the links and nuisances but the images were striking. Closes March 2026. 

Interesting online lecture from the London Art History Society on Toulouse-Lautrec. Writer and lecturer, Juliet Heslewood, led us through Lautrec’s life and art discussing how although he was a painter it was his poster designs which were pioneering and for which he is most well known. She discussed how his art reflected his lifestyle and outlined the main subjects he painted from animals to brothels and places of entertainment. She also highlighted the main models he used and pointed out how many of them had red hair at a time when artists were studying colour contrasts. As I typed the talk up I realised it had been a bit disjointed, swapping between subjects and models, to maintain a chronological narrative. I’m all for chronology but I this case it might have been better to take a list based approach.

Useful online lecture from the National Gallery looking in detail at the life of Elizabeth Vigee Le Brun the gallery’s self-portrait of her. Jacqui Ansell, an expert on historic dress, interviewed Lucy Davies, author of a new book on this picture for the National Gallery, and they outlined Le Brun’s exciting life story from being an untaught artist to court painter before having to flee Paris in the Revolution and travelling around Europe. They discussed how Le Brun saw Ruben’s “Le Chappeau de Paille” which is also in the National Gallery, when she visited Antwerp with her art dealer husband, and how she based her self-portrait on it. They also looked at other self-portraits by her and discussed how and why she liked to depict herself.

Intriguing online lecture from the British Museum introducing a travelling exhibition on ‘inauthentic objects’. Tom Cummins led us through the themes of the show telling us some of the fascinating stories of the objects included. He outlining all the different reasons objects are inauthentic from the obvious one of fakes, through copies made for study, positive uses of copies to replace or enhance original pieces and overly restored pieces. I knew some of the stories but my favourite, which I hadn’t known before, was that of the Risley Park Lanx, which had been known via a drawing from the 18th century but which reappeared in an auction in 1991 however it was proved to be a fake made by Shaun Greenhalgh based on the drawing. I was also interested to hear how 3D printing had been used at the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Palenque in Mexico to basically produce a cover for it based on an 1891 photograph to both protect it and to show its condition over 100 years ago as it has already ...